MP TIM Collins this week called on the boss of United Utilities to give frustrated residents relief from the stench of sewage, reports Rachel Kitchen.

Neighbours of Kendal's Wattsfield Road sewage works say the disgusting stink is still blighting their everyday lives, despite the power and water giant spending £400,000 on odour-busting technology earlier this year.

The work followed The Westmorland Gazette's Stop the Stink campaign, launched to urge United Utilities to tackle foul odours from the plant.

Stan Harrison, of Bellingham Road, keeps diaries of the smells, and does not believe the recent hot weather is to blame.

"On Thursday, July 5, there were no smells all day - it was a really hot, sunny day, completely calm.

Yet at four the following morning it was so bad we had to get up out of our bed and close the bedroom windows, and you can imagine what that's like on a hot, humid night."

Mr Harrison suspects sludge stored in holding tanks before being taken away by tanker may be releasing foul smells, and he also has doubts about the effectiveness of the new odour filters.

"If the filter system is working properly, why are we getting smells at 11 at night, and early in the morning, when there is nothing happening on site? If there are any releases of foul smells, why isn't this fancy filter system taking care of it?"

Dr Ernie Robin of Wattsfield Road wrote to Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Collins to express the disappointment of residents at the continuing stench, describing it as "wholly unacceptable".

Dr Robin is keen for as many residents as possible to express their views during the open evening at the sewage plant on July 24, at 7pm.

This week Mr Collins sent a strongly-worded letter to John Roberts, chief executive of United Utilities, asking what action he intends to take on the stink.

During a visit to Kendal last year, Mr Roberts pledged the company would "sort out the problems".

Scott Burns, of South Lakeland District Council's environmental protection group, said: " We always said it was a dry spell that would test how good it was, and unfortunately this last dry spell has not been very good at all.

We need to know what the reason is."

He believes the problem may lie with the levels of oxygen being pumped into the sludge tank, where millions of bacteria break down and 'clean' dirty liquid sewage.

Jennifer Ware, for United Utilities, told the Gazette: "There have been problems with some of the new measures which we introduced, and we are working to resolve them as reasonably quickly as we can, and we are also liaising with environmental health officers at SLDC to achieve a solution to this."